


The Silly Season

by athena_crikey



Category: Yes Minister
Genre: Episode Style, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 12:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7463244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hacker decides to try his hand at some policy decisions. It's not long before he gets burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silly Season

A gloomy June gave way to a only marginally sunnier July, the House rose for the summer, the British people flocked abroad to vacation in warmer climes, and the Civil Service settled down to get some serious work done before the hyper-sensitive gears of the political apparatus began to turn again. 

Hacker, in his first Ministerial summer, read in some amazement the bulk of policy proposals put in front of him for approval. After the Sahara-like winter and spring following the election, when he had been lucky to take a decision a week, he was finding his desk nearly submerged in submissions daily. Well. Lightly sprinkled at least. 

He stared at the morning’s first haul while handing his hat and umbrella to Bernard, just as bemused by it as he had been since the deluge started.

“I really can’t understand it,” he said, sitting gingerly in his chair, as if he might scare the submissions away with an overly brisk movement. “Up ‘til now squeezing submissions out of Humphrey’s been like blood from a stone. And suddenly I’m up to my neck in it.”

“Um, even if you _could_ squeeze that much blood from a stone, Minister, you wouldn’t want to be up to your neck in it,” said Bernard, with an odd bob on his toes and his hand at his neck to indicate an imaginary water-line. At Hacker’s look he turned the motion to an awkward flattening of his tie, and then glanced down to pick up the diary. 

“Yes, alright, but you take my point.” Hacker made a conceding motion.

“Well, Minister, it’s summer.”

“I know that, Bernard. I do have a calendar on my desk.”

“Actually it’s in your drawer now, Minister. You put it there last week after you knocked it off for the third time.”

Hacker glanced down at the surface of his desk; sure enough, there was no calendar. Just a lot of papers. Unlike the letters and papers perpetually overflowing from his inbox which arrived from outside the Department, the submissions on the rest of the desk’s surface came from the various rungs of secretaries slaving away under Humphrey to produce the most obscure and Byzantine reports possible.

“But the question is why, Bernard. Why the sudden influx of submissions? Has Humphrey been ill? Or perhaps an underground paperwork network has been formed?” In his mind’s eye, Hacker conceived of a convoluted Great Escape-esque chain of Assistant Secretaries banding together to sneak reports up to the Minister’s desk past the eagle eyes of their superiors.

Bernard’s eyebrows crinkled. “Not that I know of, Minister. It’s just summer. You know, the silly season.”

“The silly season,” repeated Hacker blankly.

Bernard nodded, shifting his grip on the large leather diary. “The one time of the year you can get … well, _interesting_ submissions in. The House isn’t sitting so there can’t be awkward questions, and most of the public is on holiday so no one’s reading the papers anyway. And, since we’ve just had an election and now’s the time to get all of the unpopular policies out of the way, it’s going to be an especially busy summer.”

Hacker looked down at the papers on his desk in front of him again, and then back up at his Private Secretary in suspicion. “Are you telling me these are courageous decisions, Bernard?”

“Good lord, no!” The man looked genuinely shocked, mollifying Hacker. “Just more sensitive than what might otherwise be put out in the year.”

“Which is nothing,” pointed out Hacker. Bernard looked about to protest that, so he waved him off. “Never mind. What’s on the schedule for today?”

Bernard stepped over to stand beside him and opened the diary, tilting it so Hacker could see the pencilled entries and indicating events with his finger as he read.

“You have your weekly meeting with Sir Humphrey at 10:00, then the Committee for Steel Manufacturing and Marketing – that’s about the new regulations for inspectors in factories – then a meeting with Daniel Crayburg at 10:30 – Party Communications – then the Party Committee on Education at 11:00, then –”

“I thought this was supposed to be summer, Bernard!” interrupted Hacker, feeling pole-axed. “No House sitting, no P.Q., no running down the street at all hours to vote…” 

“That’s right, Minister. But that just means more free time, which means more work here.”

“Surely it doesn’t have to?” asked Hacker, surprised. “I mean, I don’t do half that amount usually, surely it could get by without me now.”

Bernard looked uncomfortable. “Well, perhaps it _could_ , Minister, but ministers aren’t supposed to sit around with idle time.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing Humphrey would say. Keep them with their noses to the grindstone so they can’t get in your hair!”

Bernard opened his mouth and, seeing Hacker’s expression, shut it again. “It is all quite important, Minister,” he protested sincerely. “Some of these people have been waiting weeks to get in to see you.”

“How many of them?”

“Well,” he glanced down at the diary. “Doris Leatherbottom, with the Canine Betterment Foundation, about that park we closed to make more office space for the Food Inspections Agency.”

Hacker frowned. “But that all went through months ago.”

“Yes; she’s been waiting since then,” affirmed Bernard.

“But why, I’m not _that_ busy!”

“You haven’t been that free either, Minister.”

Something in the man’s tone caught Hacker’s attention, and he ran the name back through his memory. And then straightened so sharply his chair shook as the penny dropped. “Bernard, we’re not talking about _that_ Doris Leatherbottom, are we? With the hat like a cake that’s been sat on and the yellow galoshes? The one who used to head the Commission for the Independence of Ungulates?”

Bernard glanced down guiltily. 

“Well you can strike her right off. I don’t care how long she’s waited, we’re not having any more of that nonsense in here. I nearly jigged when I heard that horse thing had disbanded.”

“I think you actually mean cow thing, Minister, or perhaps goat and sheep thing, horses not in fact being ungulates. Ungulates are defined by their split hooves,” he gestured with his fingers, “while of course horses have rounded hooves.”

“Thank you, Bernard,” said Hacker, in the long-suffering tone he was already beginning to associate with his permanent secretary’s pedantic corrections. “Strike her off. In fact, strike off anyone who’s not strictly kosher. I don’t need to be filling my time with make-work nonsense. I can use it for _real_ work.”

Bernard looked at him cagily. “Such as, Minister?”

“You said now was the time to be putting through actual policy decisions. I intend to take some!”

  
*** 

“He wants to _what_?” seethed Sir Humphrey, dropping his pen. The Permanent Undersecretary had been in the process of adding comments and suggestions to a memo, but now he looked up incredulously. Bernard appeared to attempt to shrink into himself, whelk-like.

“He wants to implement some real policy, Sir Humphrey,” he repeated miserably.

“And how, pray tell, after finally beginning to accept that he is here to approve our suggestions rather than come up with his own harebrained schemes, has he suddenly reversed course and come to the radical conclusion that it’s his job to implement policy?”

“Well, he was asking about why he suddenly has all this extra reading and signing to do, so I told him about it being the silly season, and then he asked why with the House risen for summer he still has so much work to do, and he just slightly caught on to the fact that I’ve been filling his diary up with less than important meetings, and –”

“All a minister’s meetings are important, Bernard,” interrupted Sir Humphrey sharply. “They are vitally important in allowing us to do our jobs. Without them, we would be in the situation we currently appear to be approaching, Ministerial Hovering. And do you know what that’s followed by?”

“No, what?” breathed Bernard, wide-eyed.

“Ministerial Participation!” bellowed Sir Humphrey. “You know what it’s like trying to make decisions and implement policies when the minister insists on being a part of it. Slows us down for weeks while we have to convince him that our proposals are the right one and fend off his uninformed suggestions. Summer is an indefinite period, Bernard. Before you know it, the House will be sitting again and Britain will be full of newspaper-reading public, and we’ll have missed our window of opportunity having accomplished nothing. All because the minister now wants to be _involved_ in the process.”

“But I thought we were trying – that is, you said – I didn’t think we wanted change,” stammered Bernard, confused. 

“Change? Who said anything about change? Of course there will be no change,” spat Sir Humphrey. “Do you have any idea how much action is required to maintain inaction? For every program or commission or committee that fulfills its mandate we have to draw up a new one, for every lease that runs out a new one must be signed, for every potential hazard a solution must be found. Besides which, the ministry’s budget must be spent, and if at all possible new facilities and equipment and staff taken on board. Size equals might, Bernard!”

“Yes, Sir Humphrey,” said Bernard, quailing slightly. The Permanent Secretary took a slow breath and sat back, visibly calming. 

“Now,” he said. “Clearly, the minister cannot be permitted to get anywhere with this dangerous new idea of his. You’ll have to put a stop to it, Bernard.”

“Stop? How? He’s already made me clean out half his diary so he’ll have time to come up with policies and review proposals.”

Sir Humphrey shuddered delicately. “You’ll just have to think of something, won’t you? We must all clean up our own messes.”

  
*** 

It took Bernard nearly a day to find a project with the potential to catch the Minister’s often irregular attention; it took another to rewrite the briefing note to make it a sure bet.

The Midlands Health Administrative Reform was perfect. On paper, it was nothing more than the shuffling of staff between Departments and offices to disguise an addition of positions rather than the promised reduction. On the ground it involved three different Departments, five different sites, ten job classifications, and several warehouses full of letterhead. The Minister could spend all summer trying to sort the unsortable and account for deductions which did not in fact exist. 

Most importantly though, the Midlands Health Administration Reform was the Minister for Health’s personal project, and as such the apple of his eye. Which meant, no matter what policy suggestions the Minister came up with, nothing would change. 

Bernard made only one mistake. He took a long weekend.

  
*** 

Tuesday morning began in the perfectly normal fashion for Bernard Woolley. He dressed in a light suit, ate a quick breakfast, and caught the surprisingly punctual train. It wasn’t until 8:14am when he opened the morning paper that he knew everything had gone pear shaped.

_HACKER HACKS WASTE  
MIDLANDS STAFF SHUFFLE SLASHED_

Bernard’s eyes glazed over after the first couple of lines, but by then he’d read more than enough. 

On entering the Department, he didn’t bother to go to the Minister’s office. Instead, he bore left, and tried not to whimper.

  
*** 

“Well, Bernard,” said Sir Humphrey, sitting at his desk. Behind the ancient oak desk, early morning sunlight pouring in from behind over his well-tailored outline, he looked rather like the Archangel Gabriel, or at least like the Archangel Gabriel would look if he were a member of Her Majesty’s Civil Service.

Bernard waited mutely, trying not to tremble. 

“You’ve put your foot in it this time, haven’t you? And now the whole department stinks.”

“Um, it was the Minister who did it, Sir Humphrey. I would have stopped him, if I had known. I mean,” he added, with more desperation than tact, “who could have thought he would go and _cancel_ the staff shuffle?”

Sir Humphrey raised his eyebrows, utterly unsympathetic. “Parents must still clean up their children’s messes, however feeble-minded the child.”

“I’m not the Minister’s father!” protested Bernard.

“No, just his minder,” spat back Sir Humphrey, his face clouding. The storm broke abruptly, its full fury unleashed on the quivering private secretary. “Had you been his parent, he wouldn’t have made it to the first day of nursery school. As it is, he will be lucky to make it to the next Break. And you, Bernard, will be lucky to survive him.”

“Oh please, Sir Humphrey –”

“Of all the harebrained, foolish, _witless_ schemes.” Sir Humphrey sketched an unflattering motion with his hand. “What _idiocy_ lead you to suggest he tackle the Minister of Health’s pet project?”

Suffused by terror, Bernard fell back on wittering. “I thought – that is, it seemed – I mean, I didn’t think he couldn’t do any harm – it’s so complicated, and –”

Sir Humphrey stood, cutting off the rambling abruptly, and strode around the side of his desk. “Bernard, never underestimate a Minister’s ability to make a complete hash of a project. It’s just like children and finger paint: never let them anywhere near anything you don’t want ruined.”

“Yes, Sir Humphrey,” said Bernard, shoulders narrowed and back curved, a model of contrition. Sir Humphrey padded round to stand beside him, silent as a jaguar stalking through the jungle. 

“Now then. I suppose we had better mop up this mess.”

  
*** 

“Humphrey!” There was a ring of desperation to Hacker’s tone as he looked up from his desk, one hand still outstretched towards the telephone receiver, shaking. “I’ve just had the most frightful call from Gerry. He’s lit his hair on fire about the Midlands Staff Shuffle.” The Health Minister, a towering volcano of a man, was famed for his fiery meltdowns which often singed cabinet colleagues.

“Yes, Minister, the wheels do seem to have come off.” Sir Humphrey stopped before the wide oak desk, hands linked behind his back. Outside rain was lashing against the windows, creating a soft background whisper; the grey sky had darkened the room, casting a sombre shadow. 

Hacker looked bleakly helpless, propping his elbows up on the desk and holding his head in his hands. “Well what am I to do? If I do nothing he’ll rip me to shreds at cabinet; you know what he’s like.”

“Yes Minister, very distressing. But given that this was a policy decision, I don’t really see how I can step in.” Sir Humphrey sounded the very model of contrition.

“That’s never stopped you before. You’re my advisor, Humphrey! I need advice.” 

“Well really, it’s rather difficult. I’m quite swamped with this other work, you see, and –”

Hacker snapped up like a cracked whip. “What work?”

Sir Humphrey spread his hands equitably. “All the policy suggestions you’ve been producing over the past week. Each must be looked into thoroughly, costed, drafted, redrafted, refined, reviewed – and with staff on their summer holidays…” he shrugged.

“But this is more important – never mind that other business now,” ordered Hacker. “Don’t you see that this is the burning platform – this is what we must drive forward.”

Bernard straightened. “Um, you can’t drive a burning platform, Minister. If you did, all the bits would fall off, and…” he faded into silence under Hacker’s smouldering glare. Outside a wall of rain dashed itself against the window, echoing with the staccato beat of a snare drum. Hacker slowly turned back to his permanent secretary.

“Do I make myself understood, Humphrey?”

“If I may be permitted to put your other suggestions on hold, then yes, Minister, I believe I can manage something.”

“Good. Do. Before I get another call from Gerry.” He passed a trembling hand over his hair, smoothing it down reassuringly.

  
*** 

“I want you to call off your minister, Stephen,” announced Sir Humphrey without prelude, from the comfort of his armchair. All about the serenity of the Reform Club crystal and china clinked delicately and a low murmur of background conversation provided a soft background hum, while servers passed between groupings of armchairs like fish through reeds. The air was a smoky blue, the chrysanthemum-print wallpaper yellowing with nicotine.

Stephen Halloway, Permanent Secretary of the DHSS, leant back in his chair and frowned. “I don’t really see how I can, Humphrey. He’s frightfully ticked off about it all; you know it was his pet scheme.”

“Yes, _I_ know, but my minister didn’t. It was pure bad luck that he happened to go ahead with the decision to scrap the shuffle.”

“Bad luck? And where were you when he was taking this decision?” asked Halloway, glancing at Sir Humphrey from over the top of his tumbler. 

“That’s not the point,” replied Sir Humphrey, quickly. “The point is, would he rather suffer a small setback now, or a much larger one later?”

Halloway stilled in the act of lighting a cigarette. “Meaning?”

Sir Humphrey leaned forwards, speaking with an air of frankness. “Meaning the Minister is in the process of conceiving austerity cuts to various departments and programmes throughout Government. If these were to go through, they would have a far greater impact on the DHSS than the cancelling of the Midlands Staff Shuffle. If my minister is stymied over that, I won’t have very strong grounds to suggest he control cuts in other areas.”

Halloway pursed his lips. “I see. He still won’t like it.”

“When do they ever? But after all, one must eat one’s greens before there can be a question of pudding.” Sir Humphrey smiled a wide, toothy smile. Halloway sighed.

“Alright. I’ll put it right, so long as I’ve your word there will be no more cuts.”

Sir Humphrey put three fingers to his forehead. “Scout’s honour.”

  
*** 

It was still raining outside, water now sluicing out from a spout to pour in a waterfall past one of the windows. Hacker considered it little wonder those who could afford to went abroad for the summer months.

“You’ve really fixed it, Humphrey?” he asked, turning his attention back to his Permanent Secretary.

“Of course, Minister. Your word is my command.” Sir Humphrey gave a solicitous little bow.

“And it’s not going to come back to bite me in the… posterior?” Hacker looked firmly up at the man. 

“Absolutely not. There’s just the one thing. I will need to continue working on the file for some time, just to ensure the whole affair is properly closed off with the DHSS.”

“Meaning – what?” demanded Hacker, sharply. “That there won’t be time for my summer policies?”

Sir Humphrey gave a beatific smile, clasping his hands before him. “Alas, yes Minister.”

END


End file.
